Making and learning together: Where the makerspace mindset meets platforms for creativity

Abstract

While makerspaces are rightly recognized as places for getting people of all ages together to experiment with materials, technologies, processes, and narratives, they are inevitably limited by physical resources of time, space, and money. The appealingly inclusive concept of a “makerspace mindset”—that is, a worldview that admits the possibility of gathering and collaborating a creative fellowship without borders—can facilitate the goal of a global learning community. To meet that goal, however, new thinking must identify how to equitably direct efforts toward a more expansive and sustainable culture for creating. Articulating how and why the vast array of events, environments, tools, or toys that encourage people to create can promote making and connecting is the first step. This article elaborates on our existing work regarding platforms for creativity to consider those principles the makerspace mindset must manifest to encourage learning for a lifetime. We argue that imagining the makerspace mindset as a key plank in platforms for creativity can inspire the development of more and better ways for us to learn about ourselves and others by making and sharing. Framing the makerspace mindset with platforms for creativity illuminates the potential for making and learning to grow creative, curious individuals who together will form an engaged society of learners at large.

At the beginning of the previous decade, a well-equipped makerspace—complete with a 3D printer on a worktable, rotary tools on the counter, microcontroller parts on the shelves—was the sine qua non of a technologically forward-thinking school’s STEM-oriented curriculum. As a place where students could come together to tinker and produce tools and crafts, the setup certainly looked as if it could facilitate learning “disguised as exploration and play” (Carey et al., 2014).

Yet, it became clear that the ideal fell short of the realities of teaching and learning; the promise of a one-size-fits-all solution to the “hands-on, minds-on” deep engagement of routinely learning through making did not materialize. The definitive makerspace landscapes described in the literature of the time (e.g. Hatch, 2013; Kemp, 2013), while well-meaning, valorized the idea that the contents of the room—and the tangible products those tools helped create—held as much potential as the individual and group agency, discovery, and collaboration that makerspaces can ideally foster.

Fast-forward to now: It is more than occasionally recognized that the kinds of active experiences that a makerspace promotes do not necessarily depend on physical parameters. The sense of what a makerspace can be has evolved in both childhood and adult education, and that evolution has brought awareness about unfolding questions of equity and inclusion (Alper, 2013; Kim et al., 2018), sustainability (Collins, 2019), and transferability (Mann, 2018). These issues highlight the idea that transcending makerspace stereotypes could bring their strengths of creation and collaboration to both children and adults, fostering communities where the learning derived from making starts with the young and extends through a lifetime.

This article furthers the consideration of how such communities can flourish by exploring the ramifications of two congruous trains of thought that promote the curiosity and openness to experience that are hallmarks of makerspaces. One train, the makerspace mindset (Thestrup and Velicu, 2019), descends from pedagogical influences such as constructionism (Papert, 1991), design thinking (Kelly and Kelly, 2013), mediaplay, and improvisational theater (Thestrup, 2018). The other direction, platforms for creativity (Gauntlett, 2012, 2018), is also inspired by some of these but also builds on social science arguments (Hopkins, 2008; Illich, 1970, 1973) that promote making things as a route to social change.

By examining the commonalities and differences between these two threads, this article proposes to initiate a discussion about how mindsets and platforms can help in the creation of a global learning community based in the makerspace ethos. To do so, we examine the foundations of the makerspace mindset, articulating how it has influenced the current culture of makerspaces as well as the perceptions of the people who work in them. We then investigate the concept of platforms for creativity, which we propose can refocus the reliance on the things in a makerspace to heighten the creative potential inherent in action. These considerations foreground our view that working and thinking through creativity and culture influence how children and adults develop creative identities and build inclusive communities with other makers. An aside: While we note that the readers of this journal are well-versed in theoretical work involving children and learning, because learning is a lifetime pursuit—and because makerspaces are an ideal setting for makers of all ages to work together—this article focuses on the kinds of learning in which adults and children regularly take part. We argue that leveraging the makerspace mindset to facilitate platforms for creativity can inspire the development of more and better ways for us to learn about ourselves and others by making and sharing.

Making meanings

Before discussing the makerspace mindset, it is helpful to explore the term “makerspace” as it is currently understood. Academic definitions (see Rendina, 2015; Sheridan et al., 2014) often mention people, a physical place, tools and materials, and teacher-led or self-directed actions like tinkering, improvising, and discovering the parameters of specific pursuits in the action of producing a tangible product. Those pursuits involve media production in its widest sense, ranging “between industrial arts and digital technologies, including everything in between” (Dousay, 2017: 70).

Fittingly for such an array of activities, makerspaces—which can also be known as innovation labs, design labs, fab labs, and hackerspaces (Peppler et al., 2015)—can and do appear in schools, public libraries, museums, pop-up civic spaces, and private cooperatives (Hatch, 2013). Indeed, makerspaces are often considered what Oldenburg (1989) coined a “third space” between home and school or work where people are at ease to congregate and be together (Lee et al., 2015; Litts, 2015; Sandvik and Thestrup, 2017). There, they are guided by teachers and leaders who encourage the coalescence of formal and informal learning with purpose, resources, structure, and facilitation (Fasso and Knight, 2019). Whatever they are called, and wherever they are, makerspaces ideally promote the idea that environments emphasizing freedom of choice, connection, and collaboration enhance meaningful learning (Oliver, 2016).

In reality, we have to acknowledge, some makerspaces can often be rather exclusive places, predominantly inhabited by technically inclined White males, who might believe that “anyone is welcome to be a maker here” but who create an environment—intentionally or not—which is not actually welcoming to people unfamiliar with those kinds of environments, or technologies, or people. A growing body of literature shows that the rhetoric of inclusion in the “maker movement” is often contradicted in practice (Davies, 2017; Vossoughi et al., 2016). In this article, we are thinking more of the ideal type of makerspace, and not necessarily celebrating all makerspaces and their users.

Regarding makers

Certainly, makerspaces—both the word and the concept—would not exist without makers. This term, too, is frequently bandied about but rarely explicitly defined. Instead, empirical articles frequently relate the tinkering/hacking aspects of making to the people who do those things or the student-based learning that takes place in academic settings (Fasso and Knight, 2019; Lock et al., 2018).

In thinking of the makers in makerspaces, it is instructive to note that social psychologists commonly classify creative activity as applying to four levels of significance (Kaufman and Beghetto, 2009). Big-C creators (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996) are eminent; pro-c creators express professional-level creativity that stops short of eminence; and little-c creators (Richards, 2007) exhibit the kind of creativity that most people express every day—through pursuits such as cooking, gardening, or sketching. In the construct of mini-c creativity (Beghetto and Kaufman, 2007), people construct knowledge in ways that are meaningful to them, a necessary step in developing any sustained pursuit and integral to constructing the frames of reference necessary for all the other levels within a domain.

Kaufman and Beghetto (2009) noted that “everyone begins in mini-c” (p. 7), and some progress to little-c, pro-c, and big-c, albeit in smaller and smaller numbers along the way. The permeability of the line between little- and mini-c creativity is relevant to this article as both permit the real-life making and continuous learning that makerspaces aspire to promote.

Little- and mini-c creators in makerspaces engage in actions that are improvisational and cumulative, and consequently, could be considered to draw upon everyday creativity. Clarifying that term, by extension, also clarifies the activities of the people who create in makerspaces:

Everyday creativity refers to a process which brings together at least one active human mind, and the material or digital world, in the activity of making something which is novel in that context [. . .] The process may arouse various emotions, such as excitement and frustration, but most especially a feeling of joy (Gauntlett, 2018: 87).

Seeing makerspace activity as a form of everyday creativity—and those working in the spaces as everyday creators—directs attention to the transformative personal and social potential that surfaces in the action of making. As Blewitt put it in his book The Ecology of Learning, “To live and enjoy a more sustainable life we can start with the everyday, but it is always important to remember that everyday life is not something isolated or separable from wider social, economic, political and environmental forces” (2006: 215). In that spirit, this broad-spectrum, not-specifically-for-makerspaces definition allows for inclusivity and befits the claim that irrespective of age and education, “We all are makers” (Dougherty, 2012: 11).

Forging identities

To rise to the potential that makerspaces can offer as centers for life-changing learning, the makers in them must come to identify as creative beings. As we will see later in this article, this holds true for children as well as adults. The adult-education theorist Illeris (2014) described transformative learning as the kind that metamorphoses people’s perspectives, contextual frameworks, and thinking patterns. He saw transformative learning and identity as mutually reinforcing constructs, a particularly helpful insight for imagining the potency of makerspaces. The essence of his argument, in makerspace terms, is that when makers of any age learn to build circuit boards or craft models, their small acts of creating are not trivial. These people are augmenting their conceptions of themselves, and the resulting amalgam of tacit and incremental learning and knowledge construction is key to transformative learning.

Every encounter in the makerspace, then, affords makers the chance to channel everyday creativity and build creative identities (Culpepper, 2018; Karwowski and Kaufman, 2017). When people make, they often feel good about themselves and what they have created; as they work alongside others, they can also sometimes feel as if they are participating in something larger than themselves. In time, they may see themselves as people who can focus, solve problems, and help bring about change in the world (Fasso and Knight, 2019; Gauntlett, 2018). Along with specific artisanal and technology-focused skills, these are arguably the most potentially powerful outcomes a makerspace can promote.

An example comes from Fasso and Knight’s (2019) study of adolescent Australian school girls in makerspaces. They describe a three-phase, 10-week-long makerspace project that aimed to bridge the students’ identities as teenaged girls and as STEM makers with a curriculum that featured circuitry, creative design, and programming. The first phase began with a survey of interests and ground rules introduced to set the space up as respectful and supportive of all the makers. Then the students were introduced to a range of electronic and mechanical resources as well as low-tech, high-touch materials, and detailed instructions for making cards. Successive projects were progressively less structured, moving from a more complex e-textile creation to a final, open-ended endeavor that demonstrated the students’ mastery of the materials. Fasso and Knight noted that the teacher’s role in this makerspace became less and less didactic as the students began to see themselves as members of a community of STEM makers. This tactic allows teachers to link themselves to ideas and actions that can inspire more expansive futures in their makerspace students.

While creative identity is the product of experience, it is also shaped by self-beliefs such as creative self-efficacy (Farmer and Tierney, 2017) that determine whether someone thinks of themselves as creative. As the school girls’ experience suggests, making something and seeing the outcome as creative—activities regularly replicated in makerspaces—permit the kinds of deep learning that can help people move beyond their limits to create new ideas (Illeris, 2014). Makerspaces yield the potential to encourage people to incrementally revisit their self-beliefs as they pursue their interests, a reflexivity that allows for growth. We discuss that process in the next section.

Mindsets

Self-beliefs relate to mindsets, an epistemological offshoot of social psychology that relates to how people think about the world and their place in it. In learning theory, mindsets are often described as sitting on a continuum between fixed and growth (Dweck, 2006, 2015), and the related research examines the hypothesis that “students who believed their intelligence could be developed (a growth mindset) outperformed those who believed their intelligence was fixed (a fixed mindset)” (Dweck, 2015: 20).

In the popular conception, a growth mindset optimizes learning, while a fixed mindset is considered detrimental. However, in considering how mindsets shape beliefs and vice versa, Dweck (2015) conceded that people hold a variety of attitudinal and ideological mindsets, just as they maintain varied and sometimes polar self-beliefs. The key, she maintained, is in confronting ways that a mindset might be holding up personal progress. That point is pertinent in this discussion: The reflexivity involved in identifying and challenging a fixed mindset—something that is routinely encouraged when mulling over failure in the makerspace—can spur intellectual growth.

While a mindset might appear to be individually influenced by personality and intelligence, it is also culturally and socially modified (Karwowski and Brzeski, 2017). Simply put, the people who form our social networks—and the networks our networks belong to—shape our mindsets, creative and otherwise.

Of mindsets, makers, and makerspaces

By encouraging trans-generational learning, makerspaces become places where mindsets, like creative identities, can be molded through the process of hands-on creating. The result is the maker mindset:

a can-do attitude that can be summarized as “what can you do with what you know?” It is an invitation to take ideas and turn them into various kinds of reality. It is a chance to share in communities of makers of all ages by sharing your work and expertise (Dougherty, 2013: 9).

The maker mindset is non-negotiable for supporting upcoming generations of innovators, Dougherty (2013) argued, and recent research appears to advance his hypothesis. In a 2018 study of 30 formal and informal school makerspaces throughout the United States, students confirmed that their making experiences helped them negotiate the challenges they faced in traditional classrooms. “These self-reflections reveal a significant shift in mindset, no longer focusing on the impediment, but rather on the outcome from the challenge presented” (Kim et al., 2018: 10).

Given its emphasis on the process and conditions of making, we contend that the culture of the makerspace is essential for ameliorating that shift. Blewitt described culture as “our framework for interpreting the world rather than simply perceiving it” (2006: 24). This conception, too, is advanced by Kim et al. (2018) in their makerspace research:

From our analysis, the role of culture is profound and crucial in shaping who participates (and benefits from) makerspaces and how they benefit from participation, the learning mindsets they develop, and how they connect with others, both within and out of the space (p. 16).

Furthermore, they contended that schools planning makerspaces begin by considering culture before stipulating which tools and training are required. Like the reflexivity that prompts confronting and questioning a fixed mindset, planning the culture of a makerspace can result in beneficial outcomes such as increased inclusivity, intentional program choices, and community knowledge sharing.

The makerspace mindset: what and how

It would seem the thinking surrounding a makerspace is essential to the activities destined to take place there. We might, therefore, talk about a “makerspace mindset,” which both complements and extends the maker mindset. It stresses the culture of the makerspace, valorizing creativity, inclusion, and collegiality, and acknowledges the richness and complexities of working with others.

Sandvik and Thestrup outlined how the makerspace mindset can come to the fore whatever and wherever the space happens to be. The heart of a makerspace, they contend, lies at the connections and meaning-making that happen there. They suggest that, properly approached, the space optimizes qualities such as creativity, a sense of play, and a spirit of improvisation, and open-mindedness. Skills such as knowing how to use tools and materials, while important, are secondary. The tinkering, hacking, building, and repairing that takes place benefit from openness and experimentation, they say, and encourage a way of operating they call makeative, an approach that facilitates not just making but the possibilities inherent in working through ideas with others:

[T]he focus on learning to operate, learning to program and so on—all very prevalent in today’s pedagogical research and debates—should be contra-pointed by ideas that technology primarily may serve as friendly helpers in the creative and playful processes (Sandvik and Thestrup, 2017: 8).

This mindset allows makerspaces to exist not solely as individual places, but to connect to other makers and makerspaces regardless of location. Thestrup (2019) emphasized that the makerspace mindset can thus transcend physical and geopolitical boundaries:

I think a makerspace can be glo-cal—both global and local. This might take place through the exchange of pictures in a chat forum or . . . or more indirectly through YouTube, etc. . . . While there are materials and tools at hand, the connection to others from different backgrounds sparks diversity and fuels connection. There is somebody somewhere else to get inspired or challenged by (personal correspondence).

Reconciling spaces and aims

While makerspaces have varied foundations and goals—some built on political framework of curricula, strategies, and skills, and others predicated on an idealistic framework of agency, adaptability, and resilience—Sandvik and Thestrup question the dichotomy. They campaign instead for a kind of “open laboratory” as “a way to work and play activated wherever when needed and a certain space designed or chosen” (Sandvik and Thestrup, 2017: 4). Its tools and materials invite mixing and remixing, allowing its inhabitants to “make meaning, investigate questions in the present society and act in it according to what the group of participants in the experimenting community see fit to do” (Sandvik and Thestrup, 2017: 9). In other words, makers are front and center, taking precedence over tools and materials, and capitalizing on time in the space to meet their negotiated ends.

In a tour of Australian elementary school makerspaces, Thestrup and Velicu (2019) saw these open laboratories in action and noted the importance of context. The extreme variations in each makerspace paralleled “[t]he very different socio-economical backgrounds of the children, the economical possibilities for the makerspace, the understanding and use of digital media and technologies and of course the actual spaces available.” Despite this range of variables, the mindsets of the teachers and students had one aspect in common: They rendered the spaces malleable enough to allow them to capitalize on a diversity of material and social affordances. Armed with this way of thinking, teachers and makerspace leaders can tailor their approaches based on what could promote learning rather than on what the technology, however helpful, demands.

For instance, a makerspace leader with a laptop and an Internet connection could set up a Skype session with another makerspace on the other side of the country, or another part of the world, helping multiple groups of makers connect and learn. As Thestrup and Velicu (2019) suggested:

A makerspace does not seem to be a pre-defined set of technologies but so much more a mindset of being creative and a way to empower. A makerspace might hold the potential to unleash exactly that if understood and used in that way.

From mindset to platforms for creativity

Could teaming the open laboratory with this creative mindset recast the popular conception (and misconception) of the makerspace? Our experience in teaching and training creativity suggests a way of arriving at the answer.

Since 2009, we have written about how events, spaces, places, and tools can foster everyday creativity and help people build connections that form stronger social networks. These “platforms for creativity” invite people into a creative experience, which can range from the micro—say, a handful of LEGO bricks which two friends turn into a cute alien—to the macro, such as a system of interconnected libraries, museums, or makerspaces offering opportunities or activities. Regardless of scale or medium, platforms for creativity tender the chance for people to express themselves. Ultimately, as we said earlier about how people form creative identity, that expression provides the chance to change individual as well as collective worlds. By making things with others, we create shared understandings, which in time can grow beyond enhanced relationships to “potentially contribute to social change, community resilience, and sustainability” (Gauntlett, 2018: 232).

It is straightforward to see how the makerspace mindset aligns with platforms for creativity: the qualities of connection, the focus on individual and collective agency, the transformation of physical “spaces and digital encounter[s] to spaces of experimentation and reflection” (Sandvik and Thestrup, 2017: 4). That said, a less obvious orientation exists in that platforms and makerspaces both yield a sometimes implicit (and sometimes explicit) call to action. Indeed, Dougherty (2013) mentioned the invitation to do something in his definition of the maker mindset. We say that this invitation invests the platform with meaning and the mindset with context. Earlier, we broached the existence of exclusion in makerspaces; here, we focus on the potential of makerspaces of the most diverse (and, we would argue, best) sorts.

Our work with both adults and children in various creativity research projects and our experience teaching in post-secondary education have given us abundant examples of how this invitation works. This has prompted us to consider how we approach the makerspace mindset in our own work. For example, at weekly between-lecture seminars and drop-in workshops, undergraduates are asked to make everything from Lego models of identity to group-built media prototypes constructed from a grab-bag of dollar-store findings. We lead students through reflexive debriefs, and they lead us too, to see the richness in classroom relationships, conversations, and inspirations when people make things together. In the open and experimental culture of our classrooms, students see themselves as creators, and are seen that way by everyone in the space. Ultimately, the invitation to create becomes the inducement to connect in meaningful ways.

In the summer of 2019, we experimented with asking the greater community to participate in the Creativity Everything FreeSchool, “two weeks of creative everything, open to everybody,” featuring an array of workshops, lessons, talks, and making sessions. The topics ranged from comics to embroidery, and fashion to poetry, all centered on spotlighting creativity in a group setting. The FreeSchool was an immediate draw; more than 1000 people requested tickets, and hundreds from around the city attended (Senra-Francois and Gauntlett, 2019).

Its success reiterated for us of the potency of the often-quoted rubric of “low floors, high ceilings, and wide walls,” a combination of ideas from Papert (1980, 1993) and Resnick and Silverman (2005: 2). The “low floor” means that the experience is easy to step into; the “high ceilings” mean that the project can be taken to a high level of complexity, if you want; and the “wide walls” speak to diversity—that you can make and do many different kinds of things, with many different kinds of people. Each FreeSchool session gave attendees hands-on experience in playful creating. For example, a creativity theory talk incorporated zine-making, drawing, and joke-writing, while a session on developing a creative eye was built around a walk to a city park. Given the feedback we received from attendees, the FreeSchool met our goal of modeling a place which everyone is invited to step into as a creative being.

The FreeSchool also demonstrated the utility of eight principles of platforms for creativity (Gauntlett, 2014, 2017, 2018; Gauntlett et al., 2011) that were borne of experience in research, education, and creativity consulting. They were initially written with online creative platforms in mind, but we soon discovered they applied equally well to all kinds of creative platforms, and we find they complement the strengths of the makerspace mindset.

1. Embrace “because we want to”: Makerspaces should grant the latitude to give people a chance to make and share things they like to make.

2. Set no limits on participation: Inclusivity and diversity of people, abilities, ideas, and orientations are fundamental to welcoming all makers.

3. Celebrate participants, not the platform: As outlined earlier, people are the most important part of the makerspace equation.

4. Support storytelling: People create meaning when they make things, and the narratives of the individual can be woven into the stories understood by the larger group—which amplifies the meaning.

5. Some gifts, some theater, some recognition: The makerspace full of makers, projects, and creative activity is in many ways a liminal space. The unique qualities of such a space are underscored when participants accept and receive the presence of creative gifts, offer a stage for performing creative identity, and acknowledge the contributions of others.

6. Online to online is a continuum: While makerspaces are often physical and offline, which can be seen as a respite from a connected world, they also offer the chance to heighten creativity by connecting with other people in other places.

7. Reinvent learning: Whether they are public or private, makerspaces are predicated on learning, which happens when they support learners who are enabled to follow their own interests, explore things that engage their curiosity, and share their own learnings with others.

8. Foster genuine communities: Real and meaningful networks can emerge when relationships are grounded in confidence, good faith, and mutual assistance.

Making beyond the space

Like the maker mindset itself, these principles value the creation of a culture that emphasizes trust, inclusion, collegiality, and playful experimentation. As Kim et al. (2018) noted, intentionally focusing first on the diversity of people who use the space—as opposed to planning the space around its tools—has a positive effect on the just distribution of a makerspace’s benefits. It is a first step in creating more equitable arena for makers of all kinds and all ages.

Imagining the makerspace mindset at the heart of a platform for creativity can inspire the development of more and better ways for us to learn about ourselves and others by making and sharing. While it is not necessarily simple to connect the things that promote creativity (Culpepper, 2018), aligning the makerspace mindset to carefully construct platforms for creativity can help. Integrating the affordances of the makerspace with both digital and offline media with meaningful and supportive ways to work and collaborate offers a solid foundation for enhancing creative identities with transformative learning.